As I write, one academic season gives way to the next.
We're leaving the season of writing letters of
recommendation and entering the one of reading them. The
former lasts most of the year. The latter is brief but
intense. Both activities are time-consuming, necessary, and
may not make a whole lot of difference. At least I hope
they don't because the process is flawed, a chain with no
strong links.

Difficulties begin at the beginning. When it comes to
creating forms and formats for letters of recommendation,
colleges, universities, and funding agencies have done the
ultimate outsourcing. Somewhere in the bowels of Hell, the
Devil's minions work non-stop to complicate the process.
Want it electronic? We'll do passwords guaranteed to
protect the form from the recommender. We'll stack the odds
in favor of accidentally sending it prematurely, with no
hope of retrieval. You prefer an anti-electronic format?
We'll do forms that can only be filled in by hand. We'll
ask for six copies in separate envelopes. We'll throw in
irrelevant questions and insist on a response. Sample:
"Does the applicant get along well with peers?" (Answer:
"From his behavior in my 200-student lecture course, I can
attest that he is a sociable young man, always chatting
amiably with those around him when he is not reading or
sending text messages.")

The next problem point is the applicant. Perhaps out of a
concern for confidentiality, many are reluctant to reveal
information, like to whom the recommendation should be
addressed and when it is due. Or was due. Others give
detailed instructions, including how to express the
applicant's enormous strengths and dearth of weaknesses.
The root assumptions here are that the faculty member has
never done a letter of recommendation before, is not
sufficiently impressed with the applicant, and can't be
trusted to get it right. The first assumption is wrong; the
second is arguable; and the third has merit. That brings me
to the recommender.

Some letter writers appear not to know the applicant. My
department received a recommendation in which the author
got the would-be graduate student's gender wrong (unless
there was a story we weren't told). Another described in
great detail a senior thesis the applicant hadn't written.
Still other recommenders pursue counterproductive
strategies. One prominent scholar was fond of describing
each candidate as "among the top two or three PhDs I've
taught." One year five of the top two or three applied for
the same job. An equally distinguished scholar had his own
version. He made a mid-career move from Bigger State
University to Smaller State University, which has a less
visible graduate program. His stock phrase for applicants
from the latter was "as good or better than the best
students I had at" Bigger State. This comment was less
compelling to his Bigger State students sitting on search
committees than it was to their colleagues.

The final weak link is the letter reader, harried and
increasingly impatient trying to decipher cryptic phrases.
What was the "bit of a scrape" in one applicant's past? (He
came to Johns Hopkins, was a good student, and later
explained the episode to me. A more apt phrase would be "a
bit of a felony.") What to make of a letter praising a job
candidate, then calling him "much like Sammy Glick"? The
writer was probably banking on the search committee not
getting the reference and on the applicant's attorney never
seeing it. Faced with the enormous task of making sense of
these letters, readers soon grow waspish, as did one
colleague who scrawled an angry comment complaining that
the writer didn't know how to spell Milwaukee. The
applicant was from Oregon. Milwaukie, Oregon.

The picture is not all dismal, and a significant fraction
get it right at every stage. Some letters are even literary
gems and, as an added bonus, helpful. But here is the
brightest spot of all: Seldom does a bad letter, by itself,
sink an applicant, and seldom does a glowing one, by
itself, elevate one. That's a consoling thought for
applicants, letter writers, and letter readers alike.